Requiescat
by shabam
Summary: He tangles his hair because he can't untangle his brain.  Six scenes from Deathly Hallows, Remusstyle.  RS, RT.


**Title:** Requiescat

**Author:** shabam (tehangst on LiveJournal)

**Summary:** "He tangles his hair because he can't untangle his brain." Six scenes from Deathly Hallows, Remus-style.

**Rating: **PG-13 for sex (KINDA HET sex, no less...I KNOW)

**Pairings: **R/S, R/T, but it's mostly just Remus

**Notes:** SPOILERS, Y'ALL. This is just my way of processing DH where it concerns Remus, because there were so many unturned areas of that book...

_------------_

_Death is beautiful from you, (what indeed is finally beautiful except death and love?)_

- from Walt Whitman's "Calamus"

_------------_

If James were here, he'd have the last piece, in front of everyone, and everyone would, in turn, smile at him for it.

The icing is vanilla, sweet and feeble; it melds miserably to the porcelain plate. Andromeda's famous cake, made for a gathering after a wedding at which she pretended to be happy, has left only one piece in the middle of the table. One may want the last bite, but it would not be polite to deprive others. Remus is shackled to his chair with his politeness.

Propriety is highlighting everything that it seeks to surpress. It pushes down on Ted and Andromeda, forcing out the opinions they don't want to voice. It skims Remus's fingers and shines new light on the small hairs that lengthen and darken under a full moon. It smothers even the youthfully blinding glow of Dora, in her new white gown with her relentless smile. It fills the room with the smoky air of violence, the futility of a party after a wartime wedding, no matter how small the guest list. The leftover piece of cake burns like a signpost of the obvious in the middle of the table.

If James were here, he'd go for seconds and eat the cake without asking if anyone else wanted it first. They'd love him for it, for his exuberance, his brashness, his defiance in the face of what is proper, and Remus would be allowed to fade comfortably to obscurity again.

And Sirius?

Well, Sirius wouldn't have bothered coming.

_------------_

His bones hang loose inside his skin, unconnected, apathetic, resenting the beaten tendons and savage cartilage, the muscles and claws and wild wolf longings that pulled them from their home the night before.

She approaches him reverently, as if he may suddenly pull himself together from his dissembled state and explode or attack or flee. He doesn't. She's got the salve, and acts as if she knows what she's doing; they both quietly know it's not true. An involuntary groan, and she flinches, imperceptibly.

The touch is feminine, cool, and he hates her and loves her for it. Her fingers on his back waltz gently with the whispers of the dead.

Somewhere outside, a dog barks.

_------------_

He can't see the dark corners of Grimmauld Place, the dangerous dark arts potholes in the asphalt, but his anger forces him, moving stumblingly forward, as far away as possible.

He heaves, leaning against a brick wall. No moon for another two weeks, and he's...what, exactly? Dangerous, deranged, despairing. Leaving everything left and right. Outbursts. Almost-fistfights with seventeen-year-olds. He threads a hand into his hair.

Inevitability claws at his insides, and he can feel the end. Because she's too young for this. Because he doesn't work, because neither of them work together, and the house is slowly caving in on both of them. Because it's not his place to turn her into what she is becoming. Because he loathes the feral blood that's in her body, now, too.

Because sometimes, her eyes (today blue, tomorrow green, blue, brown, violet) ask him to do things he can't, and because sometimes, he wishes to God that they were gray.

He tangles his hair because he can't untangle his brain. His skull is in the way.

_------------_

The skin is tight around his chin and his throat, a quiet melody thrumming through his veins. Her lips trail over his jawbone and back up to his mouth, feather-light, the hair framing their faces blossoming out from her scalp into a velvet red. It looks like a curtain of blood.

Her eyes wash over him, her lashes brush against his cheek, but he can't look. There's someone else there, he knows, and he turns his head away because he knows precisely who it is, opaque over her soft nakedness, a dark smear on glass.

There is fierce liquid poetry in the lines of Sirius's shoulders and neck.

Remus kisses his wife, and drowns.

_------------_

It's not, it's not, it's _really_ not all right, because he cannot remember being this panicked all the time, ever.

They all lied. Molly and Arthur and everybody. They told him with smiles that he'd love being a father, and he doesn't, he hates it with a terrible clinging knowledge that he wouldn't give it up for anything, in this world or the next.

Anxiety has become his new middle name, and he's all angles. He's never been graceful, but his awkward movements do an insane tango with his nerves so that holding his son almost brings him to his knees in fear that he'll do something wrong. Dora, surprisingly--somehow expectedly--is a natural, infused with a rare control of movement when she holds the baby. His soft tiny limbs blend seamlessly with the light glancing off her arms.

He's sleeping now, and Remus shouldn't feel anxious, but it's now when he fears the most, a low, smooth fear at the pit of his stomach. Perhaps the love he has amassed within the past two months--rolling, immense, out of control--will be his son's downfall. The weight of what his father would do for him will suffocate his miniature bones, and then Remus won't know what to do.

He drops his chin in his hands. For the first time in a long time, he regrets the feeling of expiration he carries, regrets his slipping grip on the world, wishes he could shake off the silky tug of the veil.

Teddy breathes, chest out, in, and Remus feels as if he's just watched Creation.

_------------_

For all he's read, for all he's lived, he can't really fathom it until it comes. Love was more vicious, loss sharper, redemption slower, but his template for death's all wrong.

It's not majestic, dying, it's not slow sputters and white lights and the grandeur of Shakespearean proclamations; it's not languidly, piercingly sweet.

It's a hitch of the breath, a small smattering of gentle filth across one's vision; it's a crumpling of the body at the same rough angle as Sirius's backwards fall (his face so, so surprised); it's a green light and a small _oh._

_Oh_, thinks Remus, and softly fades.


End file.
